It was a blockbuster event as marquee players — all Oscar contenders — were honored at the Palace of Fine Arts during the annual Awards Night hosted by SFFilm on Dec. 3. Actor Amy Adams (“Vice”), writer-director Steve McQueen (“Widows”) and screenwriter-director-rapper Boots Riley (“Sorry to Bother You”) were all on hand to receive their awards.

Renowned poet Ishmael Reed also walked the red carpet. The lion of letters, also a filmmaker-producer, was there to present Riley with his award and praised his work (burnished by support from SFFilm) for busting stereotypes.

“For 100 years, black women are often confined to play maids and prostitutes: Hattie McDaniel, Lena Horne,” he noted. “But in Boots’ film, you’ve got an Oakland performance artist in the female lead. His work is always breakthrough stuff. Boots is an original, guiding a new generation to fresh cinematic territory.”

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Turns out, Riley is a fan of his fellow Oakland resident: “Ishmael Reed is a literary hero.”

The sparkly evening, featuring a McCalls dinner amid a swank nightclub setting, raised $700K for SFFilm’s media education programs that serve some 12,000 students and teachers. And via table-top tablets, the organization also garnered more than $250K for SFFilm’s new Fund-a-Future Filmmaker initiative.

It’s been a stellar year for this 61-year-old nonprofit. The inclusive, diverse film festival continues to dazzle; its documentary festival in November greatly expanded, and throughout the year SFFilm hosted dozens of special screenings with directors and actors.

“Last year our jewel in the crown, our artist development program, granted over $1 million to global feature films and documentaries and changing the lives and careers of more than 100 emerging filmmakers,” toasted Cowan. “Your support allows SFFilm to inspire a new generation of filmmakers to tell the story of our collective future.”

Breakfast of champions: For the 12th year running, Tipping Point founder-CEO Daniel Lurie hosted his Community Awards and managed to have 400 business leaders, tech titans and civic poobahs buzzing with hope and philanthropy starting at 7:45 a.m.

The breakfast event, on Dec. 7 at the Four Seasons Hotel, honors three poverty-fighting organizations that Tipping Point supports with funds, infrastructure, mentoring and good business practices.

Tipping Point board chairman Chris James welcomed guests with a reminder that some 1.3 million Bay Area families and individuals struggle to make ends meet. Yet Tipping Point perseveres; in the last fiscal year it raised $61 million for its 42 grantees.

Tipping Point also nimbly established an emergency relief fund last year, rapidly raising $34 million to support victims of the 2017 Wine Country fires.

Sean Place was one of those who lost the home he rented with his children. But with support from Legal Aid of Sonoma County, he was able to recoup some losses and find a new place to live.

Tipping Point Leadership Council member Nadir Shaikh honored the work of Compass Family Services executive director Erica Kisch and former clients Heather Brown and Travis Perot.

Before recognizing grantee College Track, Kate Harbin Clammer, a board member and chairman of Tipping Point’s Education Committee, noted that education is a proven tool for breaking the cycle of poverty — today in the United States, just 1 in 5 students from low-income communities who enroll in college will graduate.

So there were great cheers for recent UC Berkeley graduate Chang Liang, who grew up on a small farm in China before his family emigrated to the United States, initially residing with eight other relatives in a one-bedroom West Oakland apartment.

With assistance and continuous support from College Track, Liang is the first in his family to graduate college.

“I hope in the future that my story isn’t one of beating the odds,” said Liang. “It should be the norm.”

Lurie recalled a recent meeting at The Chronicle with Editor in Chief Audrey Cooper and civic leaders. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf urgently buttonholed Lurie, wanting to know what he was going to do about a homeless mother who had just given birth inside the car where she lived with assistance from a police officer, who resuscitated her infant.

“It took me a minute to get my bearings. We both knew there was nothing I could offer in that moment or change the reality of what happened that night,” Lurie recalled. “But I realized Mayor Schaaf turned to me because she’s seen what Tipping Point can accomplish: our quick response to the fires, our grantees’ work for those in need in her community and our efforts to reduce chronic homelessness in San Francisco.”

Lurie later learned that the baby had survived thanks to an excellent doctor and the police officer who was willing to go the extra mile.

Catherine Bigelow is a freelance reporter-columnist-blogger who specializes in coverage about boldfaced names and A-List affairs. A fourth-generation Northern Californian, Miss Bigelow first divined her love of San Francisco by reading the dispatches of such classic Chronicle columnists as Pat Steger, Stanton Delaplane, Charles McCabe and Herb Caen. She began her newspaper career at The San Francisco Chronicle in 1995 as an editorial assistant to the features department's editor and columnists. She became a features reporter in 1999 and was assigned the society column in 2004.

Catherine left The Chronicle in 2007 but continues to write features for the paper and a twice-weekly society column.